Another (and factual) point in response to Dennis Martin's post.
The impetus toward sacramental orders for women is not as recent in
origin as he implied. The first formal discussions of sacramental
ordination of women in the Church of England was early in this century
and focussed on the possibility of ordaining women to the diaconate.
The eventual outcome of the discussion was negative, at least at that
time (I believe the final commission report was issued in the early
1920s, some fifty years before the US movement to ordain women in the
priesthood, which was itself not the first such movement in the
worldwide Anglican Communion). But to take the debate back
considerably farther than the 20th century, it should be noted that
the debate revolved around the reading of the NT evidence for women
deacons (and a kind of slippery-slope argument, that is, the
difficulty of drawing a line between the order of deacons and the
order of priests which would allow a person who would be considered
idoneous for the diaconate not to be considered suitable for the
priesthood). So the claim of many of those who have supported the
sacramental ordination of women over the past century has rested not
upon innovation but upon their understanding of (dare I say)
primitive Catholic practice.
AAY
Abigail Ann Young (Dr), Associate Editor/ Records of Early English Drama/
Victoria College/ 150 Charles Street W/ Toronto Ontario Canada
Phone (416) 585-4504/ FAX (416) 585-4594/ [log in to unmask]
List-owner of REED-L <http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/reed-l.html>
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/reed.html => REED's home page
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/stage.html => our theatre resource page
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~young => my home page
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